Ugly: Miami Heat get run-over, lose play-in, face must win Friday to get to No. 1 Bucks | Opinion
Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra gave the briefest pregame media session on record before Tuesday night’s NBA play-in game vs. Atlanta. One strange question, one clipped answer:
Does this feel like a Game 7?
“I dunno. It doesn’t matter.”
Meeting adjourned.
Then his flat Heat proceeded to stain the court with maybe their worst home performance of the season, trailing by as many as 24 points in a spectacularly ill-timed 116-105 loss to the Hawks that contradicted Miami having had the No. 2-ranked defense in the league this season.
The loss wasted a rather surreal 33-point night for Kyle Lowry (yes, Kyle Lowry) again in a reserve role. For him, the bench is becoming. Becoming a habit, let’s hope.
Lucky for the Heat it wasn’t a Game 7.
But now it is.
Tuesday’s loss means Miami does face a must-win game back at home Friday night vs. the winner of Wednesday’s Toronto-Chicago game. The winner Friday gets the No. 8 and last Eastern Conference playoff seed. Loser gets to watch the postseason from the couch.
Miami must win Friday for the right to face top-seed Milwaukee in the first-round of the playoffs.
“Nothing about this season has been easy,” Spoelstra said afterward. “So we’re going to do this the hard way.”
A win Tuesday would have secured the No. 7 seed and drawn second-seeded Boston to open.
And the Heat played most of the game as if their sole aim and only goal was to avoid the Celtics at all cost.
Down 53-38, Udonis Haslem took over Spoelstra’s timeout huddle and screamed at his teammates.
Miami was outrebounded 63-39, and allowed 21 boards to Hawk Clint Capela alone.
Jimmy Butler had been asked before the game if he embrace the underdog role?
“Nope,” he said. Then: “Didn’t nobody pick us to win last year, either, so who cares. Y’all not going to pick us this year; still don’t give a damn.”
Playing the no-respect card worked a year ago, when Miami was the No. 1 seed and still underregarded, eventually reaching a Game 7 in the Eastern final before falling to the Celtics.
This year the Miami has earned the underdog role it wears -- whether Butler take umbrage or not.
Relegated to a play-in game, with an offense dead-last in scoring this season, the Heat has not shown it is much beyond mediocre, an estimation underlined with an exclamation point Tuesday night.
Jimmy Butler has earned the attitude and the anger entering Tuesday night.
It is what made Butler, at age 33, as good as he has ever been.
It is what has put his four-year run with the Heat up there with the best this franchise has seen.
And it is what gave Miami a fighter’s chance to shock the NBA this postseason -- even if nobody outside of the Heat lockerroom believes.
Because Butler was ready to lead. To carry. Again.
The trouble is, Tuesday was supposed to be the perfunctory win leading to all the Celtics talk.
This was an Atlanta team Miami bounced form the playoffs 4 games to 1 last year, and beat three out of four this season.
Toronto or even Chicago could be as big a challenge. The Bucks of Giannis Antetokounmpo surely will be.
Starting Friday, with Game 7 stakes, it’s again on Butler, who had a quiet 21 points Tuesday on 6-for-19 shooting.
Last season he averaged 27.4 points in 17 playoff games for one of the greatest postseasons in club history.
This season he averaged 22.9 points on career-best .539 shooting accuracy and personal bests for both offensive and defensive ratings per 100 possessions. That he failed to make the all-star team was a felony.
In Butler’s four seasons the Heat has made the playoffs all four years, reached the Finals in 2020 and came a shot away last year.
A ring is missing, and nobody of sane mind expects the Heat to get it this time coming from an eighth seed.
That is a certifiable underdog by any definition.
“Don’t give a damn,” to quote Butler.
His Heat have had a mediocre season even as he has excelled, but he swears his team is good enough to shut up the non-believers.
Wasn’t Tuesday. Wasn’t even close.
Now the proving starts all over again the only place it ever matters.
This story was originally published April 11, 2023 at 9:56 PM.
